Chains
by speakingwordsofwisdom
Summary: My first Gone With The Wind fic. A one shot, from Melanies pov. How did she really feel?


**Rated k+**

**My personal take on what goes on inside Melanie's head, and her thoughts. It's longer than I intended it, but whatever.**

**Hope you like it! This is my first Gone With The Wind fic, but the book has been one of my all-time favourites ever since I read it two years ago, when I was fourteen. I always thought there was more to Melanie than Mitchell made out... I got inspiration from The Wind Done Gone, by Alice Randall. If you haven't read it... read it, kay?**

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A wife can always tell when he husband is unfaithful to her.

They say that the wife is always the last to find out, and maybe its true that the wife is always the last to believe it....but look back at the situation with cold hard eyes that are unclouded by love or hate or jealousy or grief, and you can always pick up on the signs. And then you look a little harder, a little longer.

And you realise that you saw them all along but you didn't want to believe them.

That is what I had to do.

Less than two hours after I announced my engagement to all my friends and family, bright with happiness and pride, I was forced to look my husband in a new light.

Less than two hours after I announced my engagement, I had to admit to myself that my husband was in love with someone else.

That I was not, as he had promised me, the love of his life.

That he was not marrying me because he loved me, because he wanted to be with me forever.

No. I heard him.

I heard every word.

He was marrying me because we were the same.

Because I understood him, apparently.

I did, then. I saw clearly for the first time the cowardice that was inside him.

I saw a man who was shying away from something he was afraid of- Scarlet, so passionate, so consuming, who could have taken any boy at that barbecue that she wanted and was determined to want the one boy she couldn't have.

I saw a man who was so concerned with his own interests- a wife to cook for him, a wife to keep his house and manage his slaves and bear his children, a wife to do everything for him- that he didn't care that he didn't and never would really love her, because love wasn't that important to him, and he didn't even stop to consider that she might deserve the chance to find it for herself.

I saw a man that I didn't know.

And now I was tied to him forever.

And I stood in the tiled hallway and the sounds from the drawing room slowly faded away as I saw my life as it would be now stretch out before me.

I had to bite my lips together to keep from screaming out loud.

And when I finally got control of myself, I slipped upstairs unseen and closed the door of one of the bedrooms behind me.

I could have gone into the drawing room.

I could have thrown Ashley's marriage proposal back in his face, I could have cursed both him and Scarlet to hell at the top of my voice.

I could have called Scarlet all the names she probably doesn't even know that the other girls call her.

And I could have broken every vase in that damn room.

I would have walked away that day with my pride. Instead, I think I lost it forever, lost or buried so deep within myself that it's like it's not there at all.

I lost part of myself that day when I listened to Ashley admit his love for HER, and saw him for who he was for the first time...and married him three weeks later.

I had always promised myself that I would be different to all other Southern women. In seventeen years, I'd seen a lot of things, you see.

I'd seen friends, close friends, cousins, walk down the aisle with wide and terrified eyes, as if they realised too late what they were doing. I'd seen the life and light die out of their faces as the love drained out of their marriage, as they realised that they didn't really know their husband at all, and that he certainly didn't know them, nor was he interested in knowing them. A wife is for running the home, bearing children, after all.

And then I'd seen the other wives. I'd seen their bruises.

And I'd promised myself that I would never end up like that.

I wanted to be married, I wanted children of my own. I suppose technically I just wanted what every other southern girl was supposed to want...but I knew the difference between what other women had and what I wanted. I wanted a loving husband, who would listen to what I said, who would want to discuss things with me, whose eyes would light up when I entered the room.

I wanted a man whose look would send thrills up and down my spine, whose touch would burn me, whose kiss would make me breathless and dizzy. I wanted to be swept off my feet. I wanted all sorts of things I wasn't, as a Christian girl, even supposed to know about yet... Oh, how many people would be shocked to know that I was capable of thinking such things. But I am a woman, still. I have the same desires everyone else has. I just do a better job at concealing it.

I thought that was what I was getting when I married Ashley. I loved him so much...

And I remember with sickening clarity the moment I realised that what I was getting was just the same as what everyone else got when they married. And the moment I knew that I would have to marry him anyway.

I was stupid. Every girl thought she was going to be different...and look at us now, all of us the same, destined for the same from the moment of our births, trained to be able to accept a lifetime of disappointments with a smile on our faces, eyes that only see what our husbands want us to see, mouths that speak only what is expected.

That's what it is all for, all the years of learning to become a lady, that's what its for. A lady compliments everyone and puts everyone at their ease...so their husband can enjoy a pleasant home life. A lady lets a man take care of her...because once we leave home, what other option is there for us, save starving on street corners? A lady puts on a brave face...and she hides her pain, her disappointment, her regret from everyone.

Most importantly...a lady never says what she really thinks. Ever.

So I never said what I thought. I married Ashley because it didn't seem like I had any other option.

Sometimes I felt like I could have him,and sometimes I disliked him intensely, and sometimes I wished I would die because I was suffocating with him...

And then the war began. And I was free again, in a way, at least as free as I ever would be again.

I can't admit it to anybody, but secretly, I praised god for the war. It was a blessing in disguise. For the first time in my life, I was working, a real job, a useful job. Sometimes I would fantasize about training properly and becoming a doctor...a woman doctor. It was absurd, of course it was, but even so, I wanted it like I've wanted nothing else in my life.

Except my son. That was something else- the war meant I was free to raise my baby by myself, and I was so happy I could do it alone. It was the perfect situation- I had my child, but I was free of my husband.

There is something else....it was wicked of me, I know, I know it was...but oh, how much I wished it, just for those few moments. _I wished Ashley would die so that I would be free of him forever._

I am ashamed of it to this day, even more ashamed when I realised how much I had hoped for it.

It was because of that that when I saw my husband again, after so long, I flung myself upon him with an enthusiasm that startled me. I saw Scarlet's face. She thought it was love.

And I could tell how she burnt up with wishing she could have done what I did.

I cant say how often I wished I could talk to Scarlett properly. I can't honestly say that I liked her, but it was admiration for her that made me want so much to make her realise how much more she was worth than any man.

I wanted to make her see how little she needed them- Ashley or any man. Why did she think she needed to be looked after by a man? I still find it hard to understand why she married Frank. She had three times his intelligence, and she'd done the impossible time after time.

She took us from Atlanta to Tara even while the town burnt to the ground. She delivered my baby on her own, she kept all of us alive, put food on the table, picked the cotton with hardly any help. She killed that man. She saved Tara, she saved all of us.

It made me so depressed that she couldn't see all of that. She still thought she needed him.

But that is how we are conditioned, I know. It's how we are supposed to think.

It's partly because of this that I married Ashley anyway.

_A girl must think like a lady to catch a husband. And every girl needs a husband._

The words of my aunt, when I was still a child of twelve.

I remembered them as the wedding band was slipped upon my finger, to the sound of applause.

And on my finger, it felt like it weighed a hundred pounds.

**Okay, sorry it's so long.**

**Please, please, please comment because it keeps me alive lol!!!!**

**Virtual-cookies to the first person who reviews :)**

**(If that doesn't work, then what will lol)**


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